What Restaurants Know (About You)

WHEN Tim Zagat dines out in New York, many of the restaurants he goes to know that he prefers his soup served in a cup and enjoys iced tea with cranberry juice in a large glass over lots of ice. Jay-Z’s fondness for white Burgundy is also no secret among the city’s headwaiters.

But what is perhaps more surprising is that when Arnie Tannen, a health care consultant in Brooklyn, sits down for his regular Friday-night dinner at Gramercy Tavern, his server always knows that he prefers a black napkin (less lint) and wants only the ends of a loaf in his breadbasket.

Those details are carefully logged in the restaurant’s computer, and Mr. Tannen suspects that the tavern has also noted his love of French fries, even though it does not serve them. For his 68th birthday in 2011, his waiter surprised him with hot fries hurried in from a nearby spot.

“You never have to say anything more than once,” Mr. Tannen said of the service.

Part of the attention paid to his preferences can be chalked up to the owner, Danny Meyer, and his well-known obsession with highly personalized hospitality. But what most customers don’t know is that hundreds of restaurants are now carefully tracking their individual tastes, tics, habits and even foibles.

Increasingly, restaurants are recording whether you are a regular, a first-timer, someone who lives close by or a friend of the owner or manager. They archive where you like to sit, when you will celebrate a special occasion and whether you prefer your butter soft or hard, Pepsi over Coca-Cola or sparkling over still water. In many cases, they can trace your past performance as a diner; how much you ordered, tipped and whether you were a “camper” who lingered at the table long after dessert.

“We will write if the person is kosher or can’t eat shellfish,” said Ed Schoenfeld, who owns RedFarm in the West Village. “And we take note of the people who sat for six and a half hours last time, so next time we are sure to give them an uncomfortable seat.”

Even a single visit can prompt the creation of a computer file that includes diners’ allergies, favorite foods and whether they are “wine whales,” likely to spend hundreds of dollars on a bottle. That’s valuable information, considering that upward of 30 percent of a restaurant’s revenue comes from alcohol. Some places even log data on potential customers so that the restaurant is prepared if the newcomer shows up.

That a waiter you have never met knows your tendency to dawdle or your love of crushed ice may strike some diners as creepy or intrusive. But restaurant managers say their main goal is to pamper the customer, to recreate the comfort of a local corner spot where everybody knows your name.

“We call it the ‘Cheers’ effect,” said Ann Shepherd, vice president for marketing at the restaurant reservation service OpenTable, referring to the Boston bar in the 1980s sitcom.

Restaurateurs are also looking after their own bottom line. In a cutthroat industry, this kind of intelligence gathering can make or break a business.

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NOTED Kevin Brodeur serves Sally and Arnie Tannen at Gramercy Tavern, which has a file on Mr. Tannen.Credit
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times

“The ability to know and read your customer is critical for staying on top, particularly at the power restaurants,” said Clark Wolf, a restaurant consultant.

Much of this information is discreetly embedded in an alphabet soup of acronyms that pops up on the computer screen when a restaurant employee checks you in, managers and employees at a number of high-end New York restaurants said in interviews. The wine whale may show up as WW. If a free appetizer lands on your table at Osteria Morini in SoHo, chances are your file says SFN — something for nothing.

The restaurant may have given you the freebie because you are a FOM (friend of the manager) or a PX, a person extraordinaire. PX used to be V.I.P., but most restaurants stopped using that label years ago because it was so widely recognized and offended non-V.I.P. customers who heard it being used. Some PX’s are also flagged NR, for never refuse.

At some restaurants, HSM is short for heavyset man; at others, LOL stands for little old lady — two types of diners who may need special seating. Customers with bad reputations are often flagged HWC, handle with care. And if there’s an 86 on your profile, chances are you will be making alternative plans for dinner. There are also some more profane acronyms, though most managers say they have been all but phased out for fear of lawsuits.

As if all this isn’t enough, most restaurants, particularly those owned by big companies like the Altamarea Group and Mr. Meyer’s Union Square Hospitality Group, have a separate computer system that catalogs old bills. Managers bristle at the suggestion that they keep this information so they can analyze an individual’s spending patterns; it is used primarily, they say, to answer customer billing questions and to provide receipts to those who have lost them.

That restaurants strive to know their clientele is hardly news. For years, customer information was scribbled in a big book at the front of the house. And the headwaiter or the manager played a crucial role, remembering things that weren’t written down, like a guest’s anniversary or favorite wine.

But computer software and Internet companies (particularly reservation systems like OpenTable and Rezbook) have pushed service to another level, allowing restaurants to amass a trove of data with ease. When a reservation is made on OpenTable, the restaurant is sent a bare-bones listing: the customer’s e-mail address, any special requests and a note indicating whether the person is an OpenTable V.I.P., someone who has used the service at least 12 times in the last year.

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OpenTable’s software then allows restaurants to add information, which is called up when a customer arrives. (Restaurants owned by large groups typically share the data with one another.)

In bigger establishments, the data is often printed on a slip that is shared with as many as a dozen people, including the pastry chef and the sommelier. The slip typically shows up in several spots in the kitchen, chiefly to let everyone know if the customer has a food allergy. The server also gets a peek.

Managers are usually the ones to enter notes, and they concede that too much information can be a problem.

Chloe Nathan Genovart, who worked at the elite restaurant Per Se for seven years, including several as headwaiter, said the details that restaurants log can be powerful, but the trick is in knowing how to deploy them. For instance, a headwaiter may know the name of a customer’s wife, but should never use it unless he or she knows the woman.

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Rocky Cirino, Marea's general manager at left, has customer preferences on a computer.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

“Sometimes a man will come in with another woman, not their wife,” Ms. Nathan Genovart said. “You have to be very careful about what you say.”

Mr. Meyer said that out of curiosity, he recently examined the profile his restaurant group keeps on him and his wife. Hers is fairly straightforward, he said; it notes that she is his wife, an actress, allergic to crustaceans and left-handed. Mr. Meyer is less certain how he feels about his own profile, which points out that he is “the” Danny Meyer and likes extra cheese with his pasta.

“I am happy that someone cared to note I want extra cheese on the side,” he said, “but I don’t necessarily want to be that predictable.”

Mr. Wolf, the restaurant consultant, said the information restaurants have should remain invisible.

“If you say, ‘I know you like a white Burgundy from the 1970s,’ that is creepy,” he said. “Instead, you ask them what they like and point them in the direction of that white Burgundy.”

In interviews, restaurant managers said they agreed that data-compiling can be overused, and that it can’t replace a great bartender or waiter.

“High tech will never replace high touch,” said Richard Coraine, a senior managing partner at Union Square Hospitality Group. “Data just gives us an opportunity to understand someone better.”

At Marea, Michael White’s Italian restaurant on Central Park South, for instance, the hedge fund manager William A. Ackman is a regular and one of many customers who rates an NR, never refuse. What the computer does not say (but the general manager, Rocky Cirino, knows) is that servers can never seat Mr. Ackman next to Carl C. Icahn, another big Wall Street name. The two have sued each other.

Mr. Cirino reads the business press and watches CNBC in an effort to know his clients better. “If a chief executive comes in and that day he announced a bad quarter, I want to know,” he said. “It changes the tone of the conversation.”

Altamarea Group, which runs Marea, also compiles information on prospective customers. Management added a list of important people from Singapore, anticipating that some would visit an Altamarea restaurant, a company spokeswoman said. Mr. Cirino said he once saw Hutham Olayan, an executive and director of the Olayan Group and a director of Morgan Stanley, on television; he entered her name and titles into the reservation system. Eventually she came in, and he was prepared.

Still, Per Se’s general manager, Antonio Begonja, said collecting data on potential customers smacked of overreach. “At some point you have to draw the line,” he said.

The job of assembling and deploying customer information becomes trickier for restaurants that do not take reservations. At RedFarm, everyone who shows up is put on a computerized waiting list, which becomes a file on each customer. Mr. Schoenfeld, the owner, said regulars get first dibs on seats when there is a long line at the door.

“We try to take good care of everyone,” he said, “and we take better care of some people.”

Correction: September 12, 2012

An article last Wednesday about restaurants that compile information about customer preferences referred incorrectly at one point to Clark Wolf, a restaurant consultant, as “Mr. Clark.”